Carnage Will Be the Villain of Tom Hardy’s ‘Venom’

In the middle of their profile of Sony, Marvel, and their unique arrangement sharing the character of Spider-Man in both Spider-Man: Homecoming and Avengers: Infinity War, The Hollywood Reporterdropped a fairly major detail about the upcoming Venom film that Sony is developing alongside their Spidey franchise: Carnage will appear as its villain.

Spidey fans know this kind kind of a big deal. Carnage, introduced in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man #360, became one of the Wall-Crawler’s signature ’90s foes. Essentially, he’s an even crazier, even more violent version of Venom, the alien symbiote with a king-sized Spider-Man grudge. In the comics, he’s traditionally bonded to a serial killer named Cletus Kasady (hence he’s like two bad dudes in once, hence he’s mega-evil). THR doesn’t say if Carnage will be Venom’s main antagonist or just a supporting player, but at this point it’s safe to prepare for at least a minimum amount of Carnage.

Venom doesn’t have too many villains of his own, so Carnage’s involvement in any Venom-related movie was probably inevitable. Nonetheless, given the Carnage character’s general demeanor and attitude, if the film is faithful to the spirit of the comic-book version at all, that does mean this Venom movie, which stars Tom Hardy in the title role, is going to have to be pretty dark, if not straight-up R-rated. Venom opens in theaters on October 5, 2018.